Abdominal exercises

Abdominal exercises are exercises designed for strengthening muscles, tendons and ligaments of the abdomen. Abdominal exercises, along with back exercises, are essential for maintaining the body's trunk. A well-maintained trunk or core (abdominal and back muscles that surround the spine) is one of the best ways to maintain good posture as one ages and one of the best defenses against common back injuries that cause back pain.

Abdominal exercises can be categorized into four sections: Upper Abdominals, Lower Abdominals, Love Handles and Lower Back.

Abdominal exercise guidelines

Building and maintaining a healthy core is best done as part of the daily routine and/or integrated into an ongoing exercise program. To be effective, it is often recommended that abdominal and back exercises be performed about four times per week, with each session lasting roughly 10-20 minutes. Since proper form is so important when doing ab and back exercises, it may be beneficial to work with someone trained in exercise, e.g., a fitness trainer, physical therapist, etc. [1]

Types of abdominal exercises

There are literally thousands of different exercises for the abdominal muscles. Some well known systems including abdominal exercise are Pilates, Yoga and Tai Chi (Tai Chi Chuan) have movements that focus on strengthening the ab muscles. As these remain unresisted they are more for developing awarenes, endurance, and sustained posture as opposed to strength, where resisted exercise remains dominant. Specifc common exercises include:

• Crunches
• Reverse Crunches
• Russian Twist
• Sit-ups
• Captains chair

For developing a "six-pack", hypertrophying the abdominal muscles is very important. No matter their size, low enough body fat as to reveal the definitions is also important and is achievable through diet. In addition to caloric restriction and the caloric demands of abdominal strength exercise (and the elevation in basal caloric rate from extra muscle tissue) some find it useful to encourage further fat loss by expending calories through various aerobic exercise including progressive cardiovascular exercise for heart and circulatory system health.

Misconceptions about fat and the performance of abdominal exercises

It is a common misconception that one can do these exercises to "tone" one's stomach, and especially that one can "spot reduce" fat from the stomach through these exercises. This is almost entirely false. Fat is burned in response to low blood-glucose (blood sugar) levels, and the receptors for blood-glucose are in the brain; thus, the fact that a particular region is consuming a lot of energy will not cause the fat from that region to be burned at a rate any greater than if the energy-consuming region were elsewhere in the body, since the energy deficit will only be detected in the brain rather than locally to the source of the energy deficit.